This is the Weekly News Briefing from Northwest Public Broadcasting.
I’m Johanna Bejarano.
Thank you for being with us.
It’s hunting season and we learned that a rare case of ocular plague in a mule deer, which was blind, was confirmed in Idaho.
The deer was initially reported, in early June, by a person in Custer County, Idaho.
Tissue from the animal was then sent to Washington State University’s Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory.
There the test was done that confirmed the presence of the plague.
We spoke with Kyle Taylor, a pathologist at the Laboratory.
The deer was euthanized, a procedure that causes the death of an animal in a humane and painless manner.
This is the fifth documented case of a deer with ocular plague.
Taylor said, and I quote, it was a horrendous eye inflammation.
Experts say if you see a wild animal that is blind or exhibiting unusual behavior, report it to your state wildlife agency.
The full story and what that same disease can do to humans is on our NWPB.org website.
And from hunting we move on to forest fires.
Washington has a new law that basically makes it easier to get air support from the State to deal with large fires.
They no longer have to go through multiple chains of command to obtain authorization.
Central Washington is one of the areas that typically deals with large fires.
We spoke with Wenatchee Valley Fire Department Chief Brian Brett.
He says his department used the new law at least 20 times this year.
The state Department of Natural Resources also says the change is successful.
Crews from that department reported they were able to keep most of this year’s potentially large fires below ten acres with early attacks from the air.
More details about this law on our website.
It’s October and we love a good ghost story.
An old hotel in Othello, now an art gallery, called Old Hotel Art Gallery.
But did he ever have a darker past?
Once rumored to be a brothel, once a murder scene, and perhaps something resembling Casper.
Do you remember it?
The friendly ghost.
You just heard from former gallery director Nancy Briggs.
She says people prefer to go to the basement of the old hotel, in pairs.
At NWPB.org, there are more details about what paranormal investigators found there in 2010 and what this community art installation means today.
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I’m Johanna Bejarano with Northwest Public Broadcasting’s Weekly News Briefing.
Find this series on our YouTube channel.
Just search for NWPB.
